In 1863 Samuel Bourne (1834-1912) embarked upon a course of photographic activity in India and the Himalayas which established him as the subcontinent's foremost camera artist of the period. This study concerns the landscape and architectural photography of Bourne in India relative to its aesthetic and social meanings, and in light of the history of the medium during the rise to power of the British Raj. It is an attempt to understand the subtleties of Bourne's vision of India and the Himalayas from a Victorian perspective, as well as from the advantage of art historical hindsight in the present.

Bourne left his native England in a passionate search for the scenic remote mountain wilderness and the exotic architectural forms of India. During his seven years on the subcontinent he undertook three extensive treks in the rugged western Himalayas and roamed widely throughout the upper plains, concluding his travels with a shorter tour of the south. His body of work consequently grew to hundreds of invaluable large and small glass-plate negatives of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Moghul monuments, of the colonial and imperial settlements of the British, as well as of the Himalayas. These he marketed through his own firm of Bourne and Shepherd, which was established in the early years of his Indian sojourn at the socially prominent hill station of Simla. In addition, Bourne made his photographic exploits in the Himalayas widely known through the publication of a series of articles in The British Journal of Photography.

While recent efforts to bring Bourne to the attention of the general public have secured him an important position as an early pioneer of expeditionary photography, a number of factors central to the meaning of his photographs have either been given only brief mention or else gone entirely unnoticed. Hence, in an effort to more fully comprehend the significance of Bourne's achievement, I have engaged in a careful analysis of a large selection of his extent images, investigating the technical and aesthetic factors involved in their production, and further, the cultural and social forces ultimately engendered by them.